Kalisia (Progressive death metal)

Hi All,

Long-time reader, fist-time poster... I'm surprised to see no mention of Kalisia on the site and the forum... Kalisia is a french band that released its first demo, Skies, 14 years ago. Since then, they have been working on Cybion, a very ambitious concept album, as you can see below :

• THE CONCEPT OF CYBION • CYBION is an anticipation concept-album. It is only composed of one epic piece. We strongly insist on this point: its structures and audio tracks are here to provide reference points to the listener, but CYBION must be considered as a one and only piece. It may only make sense in its entirety, exactly like a movie. Music and lyrics are very closely connected, developing atmospheres trying to provoke various emotions to the listener (oppression, happiness...), proposing (and not imposing) him a succession of pictures and feelings corresponding as closely as possible to the development of the story (but everyone is free to interpret it in a different way… as each person feels music in a different way). A million miles away from the idea of an easy-listening or disposable music, like those records you listen to once or twice before they get lost and dusty on a shelf (if they were even bought...), this piece can be difficult to understand at first, but will reveal itself time after time to those who’ll strive to listen carefully, and will always surprise them, even after dozens of listening. A universal language In order to provide more credibility, weight but also more poetry to the language imposed by the League, another genuine language called Kal was created for this record. Far from being just a simple translation of French or English with different words, this articulated language possesses its own grammar, semantic and etymology, and its calligraphy is also unique. Kal results from the study of different living, dead or imaginary languages such as Sanskrit, Latin, English, Arabic, Greek, German, Japanese, and even Quenya and Tengwar. It required, its creator Brett Caldas-Lima acknowledges, "a totally stupid amount of working hours in regard to the few times it is used". • THE BONUS CD : ORIGINS • The idea The idea behind "Origins" was first to make "Skies", the band’s first demo (which was reportedly sold on eBay for more than 100 euros…), available again. Since the 1500 limited copies edition released by Adipocere in 1996 was out of stock, the band decided to give it out freely on download. Today, it’s a re-mixed and re-mastered version which is brought to you, but still keeping (or nevertheless trying to keep) the soul and the style of the original sound, just improving it in order to make the instruments sound clearer (even if some approximations become more audible). Nothing was re-recorded. The Covers Since "Skies" is only half an hour-long and that a CD can contain a lot more than that, why not give the fans something even more worth their money? This is where "Origins" came out. 4 bands were chosen, each one in a different style in which KALISIA used to pick inspiration to make their own combinations and create their own style. These bands were DREAM THEATER (progressive metal), CYNIC (experimental jazz death metal), EMPEROR (black metal) and LOUDBLAST (death metal). These 4 bands influenced KALISIA (along with so many more) when it was formed and helped it to build-up its own personality. It is also interesting to note that these bands (especially the first two) were very often quoted in the reviews published about the "Skies" release. • GUEST PERFORMANCES • Even if KALISIA couldn’t find any support from record companies (judging the product too hard to sell despite its quality), the band received the much more important, to their eyes, help and support from many artists throughout the world officiating in different universes (well, still in the metal scene) and who agreed, for the greatest happiness and pride of the band, to take part in the project. Each of them gave KALISIA absolutely amazing performances. • PACKAGING • The physical support of CYBION will, for the moment, only be a deluxe Digipak version. It is a double CD 4 panel digipak with a 36 page color booklet. • HOW TO PURCHASE CYBION ? • Three ways of ordering the album will be put in place before the end of 2008: • The physical support (digipak double CD) will firstly be available on the website of the band exclusively (www.kalisia.com) for only 14 euros (plus shipping). Pre-orders will be shipped at the end of January 2009, in order to avoid risks of parcel loss by the postal services during the Holidays season. The album will remain available on the website in the future. • Then, it will be available in French shops via the usual Season of Mist distribution network. Everything was done (meaning the band earns almost nothing) to make the final price as low as possible (around 16 or 17 euros), but as many intermediates are implicated, it is difficult, not to say impossible, to know the final selling price yet. A final release date is yet to be set, but it will probably be around mid-February. • CYBION (without "Origins") will also be available in MP3 format. It will only cost 3 euros, will be legally downloadable and without any restriction on the files (no DRM or any device pissing you off and preventing you from listening to it anywhere you want) on www.kalisia.com and will be available on different platforms as well: iTunes, Rhapsody, Amazon mp3, eMusic, Napster... (prices may differ from a platform to another). As a reward for people supporting the band by buying the MP3 files instead of downloading it illegally, buyers will get a discount coupon corresponding to 50% of the digital format price (that’s to say 1,50 euros) they can use to buy the digipak on www.kalisia.com if they like the album. THE STORE IS ONLINE!!! PLEASE CHECK OUT www.kalisia.com

I personnaly think Kalisia is a great candidate for a progarchives addition. Their music is so progressive... Hope you'll agree

Kalisia on the net :
http://www.myspace.com/kalisia
http://www.kalisia.com
http://www.lastfm.fr/music/Kalisia

You're welcome. IMO, they truly deserve to be known !!!
Cybion is, at the least, astonishing.

Hasn't arrived yet.. will let you know!

The album is not available through Amazon, CDBay or eMusic ... haven't seen it on Napster either. 

^ cool. But I think that it wouldn't hurt the band's popularity if the album was also available on Amazon.com.

Sorry if I seem a bit obnoxious about this - I just can't understand why a band wouldn't do everything to boost their popularity. I understand that they want to offer the album in one piece ... that makes it difficult to offer it at emusic.com, which is on a pay-per-track basis.

BTW: I just downloaded the album from e-junkie.com ... to be honest, that domain name doesn't really encourage people. I only did it because payment was through Paypal ...